Saturday, October 18, 2014

Virtual Gandhi in SA: New online resource lets you trace the footsteps of an icon

Mahatma Gandhi’s time spent in South Africa was a significant period in the history of the country. Tourism South Africa is offering locals and tourists the chance to virtually follow in Gandhi’s footsteps through a new website calledGandhi in South Africa (www.gandhi.southafrica.net).

Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893 as a young lawyer in his early 20s and remained for 21 years before leaving 1914 to take on British rule in India.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Bapu : Leader of Leaders

By Kavita Shah and Meha Todi

“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood.”

- Albert Einstein

Few men have ever had as much of an effect on our world as Mohandas Gandhi. He was charismatic, deliberate and analytical. Gandhi was very much a product of his times, yet one of his greatest sources of inspiration was the Bhagavad-Gita. He was a politician, a writer, an intellectual and an orator. Without doubt he was a complex man, believing in simple things.

Gandhi's leadership role was extremely complex. Knowing that violence only begets violence, he began practicing passive resistance, Satyagraha. Mahatma Gandhi was a leader that brought one of the world's most powerful nations to its knees... by using peace, love and integrity as his method for change. How could a meek and fragile person of small physical stature inspire millions to bring about a profound change in a way the mightiest had never achieved before? His achievements were nothing less than miracles. His life was a message - a message of peace over power, of finding ways to reconcile our differences, and of living in harmony with respect and love even for our enemy. Gandhi can be considered the most modern political thinker India has ever had. Today, in a polity steeped in corruption, perhaps there is a need to rediscover Gandhi.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Gandhi and status of Women

By Jyotsna Kamat

When Gandhiji assumed India's leadership the average life span of an Indian woman was only twenty seven years. Babies and the pregnant women ran a high risk of dying young. Child marriage was very common and widows were in very large number. Only 2% of the women had any kind of education and women did not have an identity of their own. In North India, they practiced thepurdah (veil) system. Women could not go out of the house unless accompanied by men and the face covered with cloth. The fortunate ones who could go to school had to commute in covered carts (tangas).

It is in this context that we have to recognize the miracle of Gandhi's work. Gandhiji claimed that a woman is completely equal to a man and practiced it in strict sense. Thousands and millions of women, educated and illiterate, house wives and widows, students and elderly participated in the India's freedom movement because his influence. For Gandhiji, the freedom fight was not political alone; it was also an economic and social reform of a national proportion. After a couple of decades, this equality became very natural in India. After India's freedom (in 1947) and adoption of constitution (1950), emphasized equality of women, when Hindu code was formulated, the population was not even impressed. They said -"Of course, it had to be done."

Friday, October 10, 2014

Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for advocating girls' right to education, and Indian children's right activist Kailash Satyarthi won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.

Yousafzai, aged 17, becomes the youngest Nobel Prize winner by far.
Satyarthi, 60, and Yousafzai were picked for their struggle against the oppression of children and young people, and for the right of all children to education, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.
The award was made at a time when hostilities have broken out between India and Pakistan along the border of the disputed, mainly Muslim region of Kashmir - the worst fighting between the nuclear-armed rivals in more than a decade.
"The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism," said Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Mahatma Gandhi and Winston Churchill

By Vishwanath Tondon

Most students of India’s fight for independence may only be aware of Churchill’s famous 1931 remarks on Gandhi, when he went to meet the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, in his usual dress. Churchill had said: “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle [Inner] Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.”1

One may also be aware that while in London to attend the Round Table Conference, Gandhi wanted to meet Churchill but the latter had refused to see him, though his son Randolph met Gandhi. And then later in July 1944, Gandhi had written to Churchill a letter saying, “Dear Prime Minister, You are reported to have a desire to crush the simple ‘naked fakir’ as you are said to have described me. I have been long trying to be a fakir and that [too] naked - a more difficult task. I, therefore, regard the expression as a compliment though unintended. I approach you then as such and ask you to trust and use me for the sake of your people and mine and through them those of the world.”2

Saturday, October 4, 2014

With the latest launch 'My
Experiments with Truth' available in 17 Indian languages

After about 87 years of first
launch of Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography – My Experiments with Truth in1927, Navajivan press released
Kashmiri and Punjabi translations of the globally acclaimed autobiography of
the father of the nation.

First published in Gujarati by the original author, M K Gandhi,
the autobiography has been translated in sixteen other languages till date.
Last translation was published in Konkani language in 2010 by Navjivan Trust,
founded by Gandhi himself.

Punjabi and Kashmiri versions of the autobiography are available
across the country from October 2, Gandhi’s 145th birth anniversary.

Friday, October 3, 2014

To evoke the sense of regret in the minds of
jail inmates and reform and help them to be a responsible citizen of society, Bombay
Sarvodaya Mandal and Saksham conducted Gandhi Peace Exam for the inmates of
Taloja Central Jail.

On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, prizes and
certificates were distributed to the inmates who appeared for the Gandhi Peace
Exam on 2nd October.